"Belgrade is a strange city," writes Andrzej Stasiuk, who went there for an event being held in the name of his famous colleague Danilo Kis.
"The gathering that was intended to honour one of the greatest Serbian
writers was being watched over by Serbian police. The participants feel
a bit like the members of a forbidden religion, meeting in the
catacombs. The audience is made up mainly of friends. On the walls are
photographs of graves full of corpses but the speakers talk of poetry,
metaphors and the phonetics of texts whose shared feature is the
narrative of paranoia and the perversion of power which is nourished by
death and massacres."

Al Ahram Weekly, 04.08.2005 (Egypt)

Amr Hamzawy explains that, due to a well-rehearsed duo, necessary reforms are going to proceed very slowly, if at all, in Saudi Arabia.
"The ruling elite monopolises the government and national revenue while
the Wahabi religious establishment controls schools and universities.
Their power is exercised and perpetuated within the framework of a
mutually beneficial relationship whereby the latter confers religious
legitimacy upon the ruling elite while the former protects the Wahabis' absolute authority
to regulate society. This reciprocal arrangement works to curb any
reformist drive, giving both sides of the equation the ability to
determine the nature and pace of political change. Against this binary
power structure the influence of other political forces in society,
from the liberal, secularist, enlightened Islamist to the hardline
fundamentalist, pales. Whatever hopes they entertain are pinned either
on manoeuvring themselves into positions whereby they can obtain the
ear of those who monopolise power, or else on mobilising the public in support of their demands, so enhancing their room for manoeuvre."

Gazeta Wyborcza, 06.08.2005 (Poland)

Miroslaw Czech and Jerzy Chmielewski engage in a debate on the situation in Belarus. In the last two weeks, several speakers representing the Polish minority in Belarus have been arrested. Lukaschenko has accused them of being a raiding patrol of the EU, trying to instigate an orange revolution. Czech said
in an interview, "Warsaw must not be silent if the rights of the Polish
minority are being violated, but Lukashenko's regime can spin this as a
western intervention in the country's domestic politics. For this reason,
one must try to represent the problem as a violation of elementary
human rights and not as a bilateral conflict. We have to make it clear
to the Belorussians that this also has to do with their rights. To do
this, the representatives of the Polish minority and the Belorussians
in Poland should be brought together Ã¢â¬â solidarity of the minorities against the dictatorship!" Chmielewski, himself a representative of the Belorussian minority in Poland, warns,
"We regret the situation but we have little influence on it. Poland
should be more careful in its statements so that the Belorussians don't
get the feeling that they are being talked down to by their
western neighbours. I only hope that the present conflict does not
result in separation and animosity Ã¢â¬â we must get to know and understand
each other better."

The Guardian, 06.08.2005 (UK)

The writerBlake Morrisongoes to bat
for editors Ã¢â¬â key figures in the world of literature who are
characterized as know-it-alls but whose existence is now seriously
threatened, as their work is increasingly regarded as superfluous.
Particularly in England, cutbacks have meant that publisher's in-house
editors are no longer able to supervise all their authors, meaning that
either freelancers are engaged or novels are published in their raw
form. "Perhaps I've been unusually lucky, but in my experience,
editors, far from coercing and squashing writers, do exactly
the opposite, elucidating them and drawing them out, or, when they're
exhausted and on the point of giving up (like marathon runners hitting
the wall), coaxing them to go the extra mile. And yet this myth of the
destructive editor - the dolt with the blue pencil - is
pervasive, not least in academe." Today it still pertains: "Those who
can, write; those who can't, edit - that seems to be the line. I prefer
TS Eliot. Asked if editors were no more than failed writers, he replied: 'Perhaps - but so are most writers.'"

Polityka, 03.08.2005 (Poland)

Adam Krzeminskiwrites on the 60th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference,
commenting that in contrast to the celebrations marking the end of
World War II on May 8-9, no country was making a big thing of the day.
No wonder: "Potsdam was a 'day of reckoning'. And one
of the judges was a criminal comparable to Hitler. Yes, the Allies
agreed to drastic solutions, like the massive 'transfer' of the German
populations living in Central and Eastern Europe, solutions which
complied with no existing intergovernmental arrangements. But these
were also exceptional times. You can't declare war on two
continents, wage it in the most criminal way, and then go home as if
you'd lost a football match. What should the Allies have done? Cut
Germany into little bits, turn it into one big potato patch,
require it to pay an additional ten billion dollars in reparations?"
But, Krzeminski insists, the Potsdam model must be declared an isolated
historical event, one that could not serve as an example.

Folio, 02.08.2005 (Switzerland)

The weekly magazine of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung is all about men. English ethnologist Nigel Barleytakes a look at "new laddism".
"I called another friend, a psychologist, and asked him what he thought
about it. He sounded irritated. 'Baloney', he grumbled. 'Laddism is
nothing but a new name for egoistical retarded development. By
the way, did I tell you I'm getting a divorce and moving into a new
place? I've realised that in fact I don't really want children. I have
enough of them all day long at work. Where was I? Oh yeah, you're
barking up the wrong tree. The real problem of laddism doesn't lie with
men, but with women! Today they all act the same way, they go on
binges, eat fast food, burn the candle at both ends... Have you seen
how girls walk around these days? That says it all. I can't imagine any man letting it all hang out like that. It's nauseating."

In his Duftnote column on fragrances, Luca Turin
calls for great perfumes to be conserved for eternity. Current scent
museums do not deserve the name, he writes. "Most of them (one in Paris and several in Grasse) consist of collections of bottles
and end up in a shop. There the frustrated visitors who were not
allowed to smell a thing for half an hour are set loose among an
arsenal of multicoloured soaps they can take home and give to relatives
and other un-loved ones. The biggest museum in Grasse used to have a
glass wall behind which you could see a perfumer at work, just like a panda bear in a zoo. And just like a panda, the poor guy spent most of his time holed up in a back room."

The New York Times Book Review, 06.08.2005 (USA)

Rachel Donadio visits the "irascible prophet", writer V.S. Naipaul, at his home in Wiltshire. The author does full justice to his reputation, and rails against French authors like the "tedious" Proust
and the "infuriating" Stendhal with as much gusto as he denounces the
"philosophical shrieking" of Islamist holy warriors. And he announces
the end of both modernity and fiction: "'We've changed. The world has
changed. The world has grown bigger.' Which brings us back to
the limitations of the novel. The writer must leave the sitting room
and travel abroad into the active, busy world. It is the tragic vision only a novelist can reach: that the world cannot be contained in the novel." Listen to excerpts from the interview here.

Weltwoche, 08.08.2005 (Switzerland)

Urs Gehriger and Simon Brunner quote from blogs, homepages and Internet forums by American soldiers
stationed in Iraq. "We sat tight, my humvee was in flames. Everyone
else from my truck was wounded, and my machine gunner, Lance Corporal
Cisneros, was dead. He'd saved our lives when a rocket hit the roof of
the transporter and exploded downwards. He took the whole brunt of the
explosion and protected the rest of us." One amateur porno forum features a big archive
with films and images taken by soldiers while deployed. The key to its
success: anyone providing material from Iraq gets free access to the
pay-to-view pages.

Tuesday 27 March, 2012

The Republicans are waging a war against women, the New York Magazine declares. Perhaps it's because women are so unabashed about reading porn in public - that's according to publisher Beatriz de Moura in El Pais Semanal, at least. Polityka remembers Operation Reinhard. Tensions are growing between Poland and Hungary as Victor Orban spreads his influence, prompting ruminations on East European absurdity from both Elet es Irodalom and salon.eu.sk. Wired is keeping its eyes peeled on the only unassuming sounding Utah Data Center.read more

Tuesday 20 March, 2012

In Telerama, Benjamin Stora grabs hold of the Algerian boomerang. In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic tells the Venetians that they should be very scared of Chinese money. Bela Tarr tells the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Berliner Zeitung that his "Turin Horse", which ends in total darkness was not intended to depress. In die Welt, historian Dan Diner cannot agree with Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands": National Socialism was not like Communism - because of Auschwitz.
read more

Tuesday 13 March, 2012

In Perfil author Martin Kohn explains why Argentina would be less
Argentinian if it won back the Falklands. In Il sole 24 ore, Armando
Massarenti describes the Italians as a pack of illiterates sitting atop a
treasure trove. Polityka introduces the Polish bestseller of the season:
Danuta Walesa's autobiography. L'Express looks into the state of
Japanese literature one year after Fukushima.
read more

Tuesday 6 March, 2012

In Merkur,Stephan Wackwitz muses on poetry and absurdity in Tiflis. Outlook India happens on the 1980s Indian answer to "The Artist". Bloomberg Businessweek climbs into the cuckoo's nest with the German Samwar brothers. Salon.eu.sk learns how to line the pockets of a Slovenian politician. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Navid Kermanireports back impressed from the Karachi Literature Festival. read more

Tuesday 21 February, 2012

The New Republic sees a war being waged in the USA against women's rights. For Rue89, people who put naked women on the front page of a newspaper should not be surprised if they go to jail. In Elet es Irodalom, historian Mirta Nunez Daaz-Balart explains why the wounds of the Franco regime never healed. In Eurozine, Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev see little in common between the protests in Russia and those in the Arab world.
read more

Tuesday 7 February, 2012

Poland's youth have taken to the streets to protest against Acta and Donald Tusk has listened, Polityka explains. Himal and the Economist report on the repression of homosexuality in the Muslim world. Outlook India doesn't understand why there will be no "Dragon Tattoo" film in India. And in Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic looks at how close the Serbs are to eating grass.
read more

Tuesday 31 January, 2012

In the French Huffington Post, philosopher Catherine Clement explains why the griot Youssou N'Dour had next to no chance of becoming Senegal's president. Peter Sloterdijk (in Le Monde) and Umberto Eco (in Espresso) share their thoughts about forgetting. Al Ahram examines the post-electoral depression of Egypt's young revolutionaries. And in Eurozine, Kenan Malik defends freedom of opinion against those who want the world to go to sleep.
read more

Tuesday 24 January, 2012

Il Sole Ore weeps at the death of a laughing Vincenzo Consolo. In Babelia, Javier Goma Lanzon cries: Praise me, please! Osteuropa asks: Hungaria, quo vadis? The newborn French Huffington Post heralds the birth of the individual in the wake of the Arab Spring. Outlook India is infuriated by the cowardliness of Indian politicians in the face of religious fanatics.
read more

Tuesday 17 January, 2012

In Nepszabadsag the dramatist György Spiro recognises 19th century France in Hungary today. Peter Nadas, though, in Lettre International and salon.eu.sk, is holding out hope for his country's modernisation. In Open Democracy, Boris Akunin and Alexei Navalny wish Russia was as influential as America - or China. And in Lettras Libras, Peter Hamill compares Mexico with a mafia film by the Maquis de Sade.
read more

Tuesday 10 January, 2012

Are books about to become a sort of author-translator wiki, asks Il Sole 24 Ore. Rue 89 reports on the "Tango Wars" in downtown Buenos Aires. Elet es Irodalom posits a future for political poetry. In Merkur, Mikhail Shishkin encounters Russian pain in Switzerland. Die Welt discovers the terror of the new inside the collapse of the old in Andrea Breth's staging of Isaak Babel's "Maria". And Poetry Foundation waits for refugees in Lampedusa. read more

Tuesday 13 December, 2011

Andre Glucksman in Tagesspiegel looks at the impact of the Putinist plague on Russia and Europe. In Letras Libras Martin Caparros celebrates the Kindle as book. György Dalos has little hope that Hungary's intellectuals can help get their country out of the doldrums. Le Monde finds Cioran with his head up the skirt of a young German woman. The NYT celebrates the spread of N'Ko,the West African text messaging alphabet.read more